Does this look like water to you? There was a palpable sense of peer support, information sharing and reciprocity as evidenced by the willingness of children to help when a problem arose for those painting. The social support of peers was cohesive as they had “aims in common, and the activity of each member is directly modified by knowledge of what others are doing” (Dewey, 1916, p. 21). The involvement of peers as teachers like this also mitigates the problem of one teacher attempting to meet all the fine-tuned needs of individuals, which can vary greatly across 30 children in any class. In their peer interactions these children demonstrated sophisticated ways of patiently demonstrating possibilities, encouraging opportunities for skill building through repetition, checking each other’s understanding, and allowing each learner to take responsibility for their own decisions, extending the invitation to seek further help once this had been tried. Such maturity of insight and timing was obviously part of the classroom culture, embedded in their observation and the daily practise that was modelled by their own teacher. volume 5 • number 1 ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne
Shared learning, Fraser & Price 2011
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